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Yeast Washing - A couple of weeks later?

sickbrew

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Can I do this.

http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/yeast_washing_the_wyeast_way.htm

with a couple of quarts of yeast, trub and all that dripped out of the carboy....say two weeks later, and expect good results.

cheers
 
As long as it was kept sanitary, I don't see why not. I would suggest that you do wash it twice, the reasoning behind that is this.

First wash dilutes the alcohol leaving more sugars for the yeast to eat. The second wash removes most of the sugars, because you have seporated added even more water leaving very little sugar behind. I use to only wash once, and have had  bulging lids on my mason jars after about a month. Do it twice and you wont have to clean your beer fridge of the yeast that gets past the mason jar lid or have one explode in the beer fridge. Trust me on this, NOT FUN!

Cheers
Preston
 
Preston, don't tighten the lids, just put them on loosely to allow for CO2 to escape.
 
Can you do this from the cleaner secondary as well?  You'd get less, but it would much cleaner to start.

Is it logical to say the yeast in secondary stayed in suspension longest and therefore was the healthiest yeast?  I need to bottle a small dubbel and was going to practice the process on that one.
 
It is always a good idea to make a starter when using washed or saved yeast.  Also, keep a couple of different packets of dry yeast in your refrigerator.

Nothing worse than to find out on brew day that you do not have the yeast you thought you did.
 
here is another take on the process
http://www.brewersfriend.com/2010/01/30/yeast-washing-101/

Just keep in mind that people were doing this and brewing beer for years and years before Louis Pasteur discovered the advanced science of hand washing.  http://www.hygenius.com/history.htm
Thus teaching future generations of  surgeons  that performing surgery with a freshly dirtied  stink finger was a poor idea.
Before that ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  you don't wanna know.

I have read that yeast can survive for an exceptionally long time  if you store them in double distilled (& boiled 0f course) water.
So if you want to keep a long time get a jug of distilled at the grocery.

I believe that the absence of anything that will stimulate or react with the yeast causes them to  go into a self imposes stasis of some sort.  minerals and other things in tap water no matter how  well boiled  can interact with the yeast and prevent them from hibernating.
 
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